from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. The bark of the cork oak, which is very light and porous and used for making bottle stoppers, flotation devices, and insulation material.

n. A bottle stopper made from this or any other material.

n. An angling float, also traditionally made of oak cork.

n. The cork oak.

n. The tissue that grows from the cork cambium.

v. To seal or stop up, especially with a cork stopper.

v. To blacken (as) with a burnt cork

v. To leave the cork in a bottle after attempting to uncork it.

v. To be quiet.

v. To fill with cork, as the center of a baseball bat.

v. To injure through a blow; to induce a haematoma.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The outer layer of the bark of the cork tree (Quercus Suber), of which stoppers for bottles and casks are made. See cutose.

n. A stopper for a bottle or cask, cut out of cork.

n. A mass of tabular cells formed in any kind of bark, in greater or less abundance.

transitive v. To stop with a cork, as a bottle.

transitive v. To furnish or fit with cork; to raise on cork.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. A species of oak, Quercus Suber, growing in the south of Europe (especially in Spain and Portugal) and in the north of Africa, having a thick, rough bark, for the sake of which it is often planted. It grows to the height of from 20 to 40 feet, and yields bark every 6 to 10 years for 150 years.

n.‐2. The outer bark of this oak, which is very light and elastic, and is used for many purposes, especially for stoppers for bottles and casks, for artificial legs, for inner soles of shoes, for floats of nets, etc.

n. In botany, a constituent of the bark of most phænogamous plants, especially of dicotyledons.

n. Something made of cork.

n. A stopper or bung for a bottle, cask, or other vessel, cut out of cork; also, by extension, a stopper made of some other substance: as, a rubber cork. A small float of cork used by anglers to buoy up their fishing-lines or to indicate when a fish bites or nibbles; by extension, any such float, even when not made of cork.

Made of or with cork; consisting wholly or chiefly of cork.

To stop or bung with a piece of cork, as a bottle or cask; confine or make fast with a cork.

To stop or check as if with a cork, as a person speaking; silence suddenly or effectually: generally with up: as, this poser corked him up; cork (yourself) up.

To blacken with burnt cork, as the face, to represent a negro.

n. A bristle; in the plural, bristles; beard.

n. A corruption of calk.

n. The name given in the Highlands of Scotland to the lichen Lecanora tartarea, yielding a crimson or purple dye. See cudbear.

n. plural A game played with corks colored differently on the sides and so trimmed that they may fall either way, the players betting on whether the majority thrown will fall red or black. Sometimes called props.

Examples

As has been suggested above, using a pulltaps or like designed corkscrew … insert directly into the top center of the wax capsule, when completely inserted, slowly (after all this is wine to be enjoyed rather than slugged one would hope) pull the cork from the bottle.

I'm not sure they still sell one-sided single blades any more, but I used to store mine by slicing halfway into the cork from a wine bottle and pushing the sharp side into it so that the sharp edge was totally surrounded by cork and wouldn't cut me when I was reaching into the drawer to find something else.